The Decorator Who Knew Too Much

by Diane Vallere

  “I’ve had plenty of crises, but crisis of identity hasn’t been one of them.”

  “Divorce?” she asked.

  “Nope, never married.”

  “Lucky. The best thing about mine was the free healthcare.” I must have looked confused, because she laughed. “I was married to a doctor,” she said.

  I heard the door behind me and turned around. Hudson met me with a mug of coffee. “I thought you got lost,” he said. He put his hand around my waist. “You’re Jo, right?”

  “Yep. How’d you know?”

  “Emma’s my sister. She mentioned somebody with a girl Heather’s age bought the place next door. I’m Hudson.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  I turned to Hudson. “Jo volunteered to take the girls to school today. Do you think Emma would be okay with that?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  I looked down at Rocky. I’d already been thinking that taking him with us to a job site with broken and rusted fixtures was a bad idea, more for his safety than any other reason.

  “What about Rocky?” I asked Hudson.

  Jo answered, “Leave him here with the girls. I’ll drop him off with Emma before we leave for the school.”

  He looked at Jo. “Thanks. I’ll let my sister know.”

  Neither Hudson nor I mentioned that Emma wasn’t at the house. It seemed alarmist to wonder when we’d see her again, especially since technically we were her guests. More likely than not, she’d pull into the driveway while we were chatting with her neighbor. I turned and looked toward the road, hopeful. No cars appeared.

  The parking lot by the Whitewater River was less full today than yesterday. I credited the early hour. The work team wasn’t expected to arrive for over an hour, but neither Hudson nor I were the type to sit around watching a ticking clock.

  We parked near the cactus statue. The dark blue Chevy truck was still parked in the same space. A second parking ticket was pinned under the windshield wiper. A light coating of dirt had accumulated over the paint, making the color appear more of a dingy gray-black. While it blended in with the setting, it wasn’t a particularly popular color in mid-century decorating.

  “Tell me a little more about this project,” I asked. “You gave me the highlights, but not the specifics. Why are we at a river?”

  “Jimmy has been buying up defunct storefronts and properties that he learned about on a prior job. Some of them are rundown relics of the sixties, some of them are patches of land that for one reason or another came up for sale. He didn’t have a plan at first, just thought it would be an investment.”

  “Has he partnered with a developer?”

  “No, this is his own project from start to finish. He financed it himself and has worked out the details. Last year he discovered a whole dump site of partially torn-down buildings from the Salton Sea. You know where that is?”

  “Southeast of here, isn’t it? At one point it was considered to be the next Palm Springs, right?”

  “Yes, but it never got off the ground. Sonny Bono took a special interest in it when he was mayor of Palm Springs, but when he died, his plans died with him. It’s a pretty dangerous area now. Street gangs, meth labs, not a pretty place. Not much left from back when it had so much promise. A couple of the buildings—gas stations, coffee shops, dry cleaners, small mom and pop stores—were bulldozed and the rubble was discarded at a local quarry. When Jimmy saw that, he got the idea to bring those architectural elements to his properties in Palm Springs and to create a pocket of businesses with the authentic look of Palm Springs but with modernized services.”

  “Using existing architecture instead of building new. That’s a great idea,” I said. We strolled side by side to the end of the pier. Despite our pleasant conversation, I couldn’t shake the fact that just yesterday I’d stood in this very same spot and had seen a body floating under the surface. I scanned the river, looking for signs that I hadn’t imagined it. Water lapped at the base of the pier, and the water sparkled from the rays of the sun.

  We stood there together, letting the sounds of crickets chirping and the faint sound of music from an indeterminate location replace our conversation. Hudson rested his forearms on the railing. I turned my back on the water and leaned against the rail.

  After an extended moment of silence, Hudson spoke. “It’s nice out here,” he said. “Peaceful.”

  “It almost makes you think I imagined it.”

  “I wasn’t implying that.”

  “I know, but let’s face facts. The police searched high and low and didn’t find any evidence of a body. You and Jimmy were here way before me and you didn’t see anything either. I guess I’ve been under more stress than I thought.” I kicked the toe of my sneaker against the wooden slats. “Too bad I lost my favorite hat.”

  “Maybe somebody will find it and turn it in to Lost and Found.”

  I laughed. “Where exactly would Lost and Found be? There’s nobody here.”

  “Somebody must patrol the area,” Hudson said.

  A white pickup truck pulled into the lot and parked next to the Jeep. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing Jimmy this morning.

  “This is going to be awkward,” I said.

  Hudson stepped away from the railing and shielded his eyes. “Give me a couple of minutes to talk to him before we get started.”

  “Sure.”

  Hudson walked down the length of the pier and crossed the grass toward the parking lot. He was over six feet tall and maintained his lean physique not through working out, but through the physicality of working with carpentry tools and raw materials. Even in the hundred-degree temperature he was dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. A red and white bandana jutted out of his back pocket, and I suspected that it would be tied around his head within the hour. His black hair had grown out from the Mohawk that he’d had a few months ago, but with his long sideburns, he still looked like he’d taken style tips from Johnny Cash. I didn’t know a lot of men who could go full-on man-in-black, but somehow Hudson made the look his own.

  I shielded my eyes and watched the two men talk. Their body language appeared cautious, a measure of space between them. Nervous energy kept my yellow sneaker bouncing against the wooden pier. I half expected one of them to throw a punch.

  A rattling sound below my foot tore my attention away from the two men. I looked down and saw a set of keys barely jutting out from between the slats. Hudson must have dropped them when we walked up. I bent down and tried to pick them up. No luck. They were wedged between the wood. My knee was too swollen to allow me to squat so I sat down on the wood and stretched my legs out in front of me in a V with the keys in the center. I pulled a six-inch wooden ruler out of my bag and slid it into the space between two slats, and then slowly angled it upward against the bottom of the keys. With steady pressure, they shifted enough for me to get them loose. They were attached to a fob with a Chevy logo. I aimed the thick black remote at the parking lot and pressed the alarm button. The alarm on the abandoned Avalanche tore through the air.

  SEVEN

  Hudson and Jimmy looked at me. I hit the unlock button and the alarm ceased. I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up, and then shoved the keys into my small bag. Maybe the police hadn’t found a body in the water, but that didn’t mean something bad hadn’t happened in this very spot. The duffle bag, the spilled coffee cup, the keys wedged between the slats of the pier, and the abandoned vehicle all spoke to the fact that something had gone down here. I looked at the Avalanche again, and again I was struck by the sense that it was the same car that had caused the Jeep to tip. There was nothing tangible to prove I was right. On the contrary, the SUV was spotless. The dirt cloud we’d kicked up would have left it dirty, but it wasn’t. Yet something about it niggled at my mind and left me cold despite the warm temperature.

  I left the pier and approached the two
men. Hudson stepped forward. “What was that alarm?”

  “I found some keys on the pier and was checking to see if they belonged to one of us. The owner’s probably wandering around somewhere. Sorry if I disturbed your brainstorming session.”

  Jimmy spoke up. “Madison, I owe you an apology. Last night, the fight you guys heard, that was my fault. I’m not going to make up excuses—I was out of line.”

  “That’s between you and Emma,” I said. The timing of our visit seemed to be particularly poor, but I reminded myself this had never been intended to be a social visit. “From what I understood, Hudson and I were asked out here to help with a job. Maybe it’s best if we concentrate on that for now.”

  “Sounds fair. I gave the rest of my crew the day off. Thought maybe it would be best for us to come up with a game plan, lay everything out, and break it down into a timeline. The city approved permits for the next three months, but I don’t expect you guys to be here that long. I’d like to use our time to flesh out the schedule. Nobody wants this job to go on indefinitely.”

  “Works for me,” Hudson said.

  Jimmy reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a couple of white rolls of paper that were secured with a rubber band. “It’s going to get pretty hot pretty fast. Let’s set up under the pavilion.”

  The two of them led the way. I stayed behind, pretending to look in the truck bed for something else to carry. When I was comfortable they weren’t keeping track of my actions, I walked around the front of the Avalanche. The bumper on the front passenger side was slightly dented. I went to the back and took a picture of the plates and caught up with the men.

  “Jimmy, I owe you an apology too,” I said. He looked at Hudson, who shrugged. He looked back at me. “I cost you some work yesterday. I own my own business, so I understand how a couple of hours at the beginning of a project can put you behind schedule.”

  “If we’re productive today, we can make up time.”

  “Here’s another idea. I never had a chance to see the job site yesterday, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be today. Hudson told me what the concept was, but why don’t you two work here while I take the Jeep and survey the site? I’m a visual person. I haven’t seen the buildings you’re planning on renovating or the various building components you rescued from the quarry. I’m never going to be the heavy lifter on your team, but if you let me in on the design aspect, you won’t regret it.”

  “She’s right,” Hudson said. “You won’t find anybody who can channel mid-century modern better than Madison. That’s why I invited her.” He looked at me and winked.

  “Okay, sure,” Jimmy said. He pulled a small notebook out of the back pocket of his jeans and scribbled a couple of lines on it. “You should go to the quarry first. Most of what I’ve accumulated is in bad shape, some of it cosmetic, some of it structural. I expect when we’re done with the first wave, we’ll have five renovated properties ready to open. That’s what I need you guys for. Get those five into shape so I can find tenants. Once the early properties are rented, I’ll know how long it takes and I can move on to phase two.”

  I took the piece of paper. Hudson handed me the keys. I averted my eyes from his. Everything I’d said had been true, but nobody needed to know I had another item on my own agenda. I left them working under the pavilion and drove the Jeep to the police station.

  The Palm Springs Police Department was housed in a long red-brick structure with a thick concrete-slab roof. On the exterior wall the words “Palm Springs Police” hung in clean, modern lettering. The grounds outside were manicured and displayed the greenest grass I’d seen since arriving.

  I went inside and approached the desk sergeant. “Officers Buchanan and Truman don’t happen to be working today, do they?”

  “I think Buchanan is in his office. Hold on.” He picked up the handset and pressed a few buttons on the phone. “Doris Day’s here to see you,” he said. Though accurate, the nickname told me I’d already earned a reputation among the local law enforcement.

  A few seconds later, Officer Buchanan came out from the back. “Hello, Officer,” I said. If I’d been expecting sarcasm or a joke about my appearance, I would have been let down.

  “Ms. Night,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to follow up on yesterday.”

  “Ms. Night, it’s okay. There’s no need to come out here to apologize for calling us.”

  I pulled the set of keys out of my handbag. “I found these at the park this morning.”

  He stared at the keys but didn’t take them. “Somebody lost their keys. You probably want to take them to Parks and Recreation’s Lost and Found.”

  “They were jammed between the slats on the pier. I almost didn’t see them,” I said. “They were probably underneath the duffel bag you saw yesterday.”

  “Could be,” he said.

  He tucked his thumbs into his pockets and let his fingers dangle down in front. It was the same way Tex stood, and I briefly wondered if they taught a class on male intimidation body language in police academies across the country.

  I set the keys on the counter. “There’s a dark blue Chevy Avalanche in the parking lot. It was there yesterday as well. The tag on those keys matches the license plate on it. The car has a couple of parking tickets tucked under the windshield, like it’s been sitting there for a few days.”

  “Maybe the driver can’t move his car because he lost his keys. All the more reason for you to take them to Lost and Found.”

  “Or maybe the car owner is the body I saw in the water yesterday.”

  Officer Buchanan adjusted his stance slightly and cocked his head to the side. “Ms. Night, we did a thorough, by-the-book search of the park after you called us. Spent a lot of taxpayer money by getting a dive team to search the river too.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “When I came back to the station yesterday, I did a little digging around. Turns out there was a little more involved in what happened than I initially knew.”

  “So you found something. Good.” I pulled my phone out. “I took a picture of the license plate on the Avalanche. You could run it and see who owns it, maybe start to get some answers.”

  “I ran a background check on you. Standard procedure for when somebody reports a crime—especially when we can’t find the crime they’re reporting. Do you know what I found out?”

  I stood very still. I became aware of the lack of circulation in the small police station, the prickly heat of the desert temperature causing me to sweat under my arms and down my back.

  “This isn’t your first brush with the police, is it, Ms. Night?”

  “I am a law-abiding citizen,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “I don’t know who you talked to, but if any of them said otherwise, I want to know names.”

  “We heard about those abductions in Dallas,” he continued. “Hell of a case. Your involvement would have shaken up anybody. Have you gotten any counseling?”

  “What happened in Dallas has no bearing on the body I saw in the water.” I picked up the keys. “These keys are a clue, just like the duffel bag and the empty coffee cup were clues. And the abandoned SUV in the parking lot is a clue. Why are you refusing to listen to me?” I looked around. Buchanan had been joined by Truman and another officer, who stood at the back of a hallway. I hadn’t realized how much my voice had risen until I stopped talking. My throat constricted and I willed myself to calm down and get control. “Yes, I’ve been having a hard time dealing with what happened in Dallas. I think anybody would.”

  Buchanan held his hand up. “Being responsible for the death of a person is not to be taken lightly. First time I shot someone I had to take six months off the force to get a grip. If you ignore what happened, you’re going to be plagued by flashbacks. Your mind will invent things that aren’t there.” He paused slightly, long enough for me to recognize he wasn’t
talking about his own experience—he was telling me what I thought I’d seen yesterday had been a manifestation of my suppressed memories. “Pretty soon you’ll have trouble sleeping, and then you’ll have trouble getting along with the very same people you always got along with. Does any of this sound familiar?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.

  “Don’t let this disrupt your life, Ms. Night.”

  He’d hit too many nails on the head for me to discount what he said, the most important being his closing words of advice. I put aside my pride. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be in Palm Springs. Can you recommend anybody?”

  He nodded twice and stepped behind the front desk. He wrote a name on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Call Albert Hall. He’s the doctor I talked to when I needed counseling. Not sure if he’s accepting new patients. Tell him I referred you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I folded the paper and slid it into my small wicker bag.

  “I hesitate to tell you this, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. That phone call I made to the Lakewood Police Department…well, I may have made it sound like you were a troublemaker, and they set me straight pretty quickly. Seems the police captain is quite a fan.”

  “Captain Washington and I got to know each other over the case last April.”

  “Captain Washington retired last week. I’m talking about his replacement.”

  “He retired?” I asked. Seemed like the case had impacted just about everybody who’d been connected to it.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know. One of his lieutenants got the job. Told me to call him Tex.”

  EIGHT

  Tex

  So Madison Night was out of town. On one hand, it was good to know. He’d stop watching out for her little blue Alfa Romeo on the streets of Lakewood. On the other hand, she probably hadn’t gone to Palm Springs alone. She was living her life and he was living his. They were two entirely different people from entirely different worlds. It was for the best.